


Didn't Mean They'd Ever Stop Trying

by orphan_account



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-22
Updated: 2014-07-22
Packaged: 2018-02-09 23:12:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2001684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account





	Didn't Mean They'd Ever Stop Trying

Didn’t Mean They’d Ever Stop Trying

Based off of an artwork by mavania and I didn’t like seeing them so sad because the other didn’t notice them. I wanted a happy ending, so I wrote this.

**_ RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH- _ **

‘ _Oh God, oh god. Please look over here, flirt with me, laugh at my jokes. Please, please_ please.’

Gavin sat in class, on the outside he looked relaxed, his feet stretched out underneath his desk eyes mostly focused on the mess of a page in front of him, covered in doodles and little scribbled notes. Underneath, he was an anxious wreck, his heart was pounding and his palms were sweating. Hidden underneath the torn up notepaper on his desk was his sketchbook, filled with drawings of the boy sitting two seats across and one seat forward. Michael Jones.

He’d been in love with that boy for years. Since he’d caught a glimpse at him at middle school, enthralled by that pale skin, those dimples in his cheeks and that curly auburn hair. But what pulled him in with no hope of escape were his eyes. He had such warm brown eyes.

He remembered the first time he saw them, leaning across the way in history, asking that curly haired boy if he could borrow a pen. When Michael turned to look at him, a surprised expression on his face at the fact that someone had pulled him from whatever dreamland he’d been in, Gavin was so shocked, he actually fell out of his chair, landing in the aisle with a thud.

His eyes caught the light streaming in from the windows in such a way that they glowed a golden brown, little dark flecks randomly dotting them. His skin was pale in a way that made Gavin want to touch it, his hand reaching out, the same one that had been propping him up on the back of his chair which is why he fell. There was a term for it, pale skin, almost like porcelain that you couldn’t resist running your hands over.

Alabaster. That’s it. Gavin, being an art student, always looked for references, trying to find the perfect colours to paint or draw someone. He’d never met anyone with skin like Michael’s. He wanted nothing more than to sit him down and sketch him but he knew he’d never be able to do him justice.

As soon as he hit the ground, the other students looked around, giggling at Gavin but the Brit’s eyes were focused only on Michael, who covered his mouth with his hand, trying to hide his smile but when he pulled his hand away, Gavin found his new mission in life.

He wanted to make Michael smile. Those dimples, those white teeth, those flower petal lips. The way his eyes lit up and just...they weren’t brown. He couldn’t describe the colour. There was no colour in his pencil box, in his paint palette that could recreate it. He was so beautiful when he smiled and all Gavin wanted to do was make him do it again, make him smile so he could draw it. He wanted to capture that moment so he could see it whenever he wanted.

So he became the classroom goof. He cracked jokes, he let himself trip over things as often as possible but only when he was in Michael’s view.

No smiles.

Gavin tried his best to recreate it but could never manage. He could never match that pink in his lips and cheeks, that colour in his eyes, the way his skin glowed in the sunlight.

He wanted Michael to look at him. That’s all he ever wanted.

**_ RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH- _ **

_‘_ Please. _Fucking notice me, Gavin. C’mon. C’mon._ C’mon!’

Michael sat in class, hunched over his notebook, writing frantically, trying to get his thoughts on paper but he was at a loss for words. He tapped his pen against his notebook, stabbing at it a little because there was a word he wanted and it just wasn’t coming to him.

He turned his head a little, trying to catch a glimpse of the boy sitting in the back left corner of the room, right next to the classroom window. Gavin Free. He’d caught Michael’s eye in one of their first classes together. It was an English class and they were reading poetry and the teacher called on Gavin to read a few passages.

Michael had been looking at his notebook, scrawling notes in it, just for the heavily accented voice to cut through his concentration and he was glad he got distracted by it. He looked up, trying to find the source of the voice until his eyes fell on the boy immediately to his left. He’d never heard him speak before and, truthfully, he’d never want him to stop.

Michael was a writer. Poetry, short stories, just little works he could pull up out of nothing in fits of inspiration but when it came to that voice...there weren’t words. He couldn’t think of any words that could truly sum up how beautiful that voice was.

It ran across his skin like silk, but he couldn’t use that. There was a rough quality to it too, making Michael shiver and fantasize about hearing it late at night, spoken softly over pillows while they were tangled together in bed.

Hearing Gavin’s lips and tongue form those words perfectly, filling the room and falling mostly on the deaf ears of the other students and the teacher’s but Michael listened intently, not paying attention to the book in front of him. It wasn’t until Gavin stopped talking that he realised he’d been pressing his pen into his book so hard, it broke, covering his book and his writing hand in blue ink. He desperately wiped at the ink with some tissues he had in his bag, looking over his hands when that same Oxfordshire accent cut through his irritation.

“Can I borrow a pen?” the voice asked and Michael looked at him, surprised the Brit was talking to him. As soon as he looked at him, Gavin fell off his chair, a small yelp as he hit the floor but their eye contact never broke. Michael smiled at the sight, giggling as he covered his mouth. He wasn’t good at talking and he always hated his smile. He remembered his hand was still covered in ink so he put it back against his desk, but couldn’t help the smile.

Gavin was...words couldn’t describe him. His skin was tan, but it...wasn’t at the same time. It was golden but not in every light. His eyes were the hardest to get down on paper. Sometimes they were brown, like in gym, where the light bouncing off the polished wood reflected off of them, that competitive nature coming through like a fire.

Sometimes, they were blue, like in the science labs, an electricity in them when he watched some amazing reaction between chemicals. He was amazed, intrigued by it. He loved seeing the green in them, though, when he sat outside, sketching underneath the little oak tree in the school courtyard, surrounded by the green of the leaves and the grass.

Michael wanted to create a word. He wanted to design a word, woven from every single beautiful language there is that could truly describe Gavin. How gorgeous he was, how amazing his voice sounded, how he made Michael’s heart stutter in his chest with just a look.

Sometimes, when he was fighting to remember a word he’d learnt through his readings, he’d look at what he was trying to describe and it would come to him. So he would refuse to look at Gavin when he caused a ruckus in class. The expressions, the sounds he made were always forced, him trying to be a clown for whatever reason and Michael didn’t want to look at him like that. He didn’t want to look at him, just to come up with the wrong word. A clichéd one that would forever be stuck in his mind when he looked at Gavin, filling the space where the right word should be.

He wanted Gavin to notice him, he wanted Gavin to look at him with that exposed expression he had when they first spoke to each other. He wanted to figure out what that word was.

He just wanted Gavin to notice him.

**_ RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH-RH- _ **

It was four years after that initial meeting in 8th grade English, at the beginning of their senior year. Everyone in their grade whispered about them. Everyone noticed the looks they cast at each other but it took Michael’s best friend, Ray and Gavin’s best friend Dan to bring them together, forcing them on a date in a diner they both visited regularly, mostly because they wanted to catch glimpses of the other.

After a week, they had a talk. They called each other ‘boyfriend’ and met each other’s parents. That was the same time Gavin painted the first portrait he ever sold and Michael wrote a piece that won a writing competition, being published in a book of short stories.

After three, they went on their first weekend away together. They slept in the same bed, talking about what they wanted to be in life, where they wanted to go. Everything about them, they talked about. Gavin started his first collection that night, sketching while Michael was asleep, accidentally smudging the bed with charcoal. Michael started his first novel the next morning, waking up at 4am, barely after Gavin fell asleep with his arms around his boyfriend, scribbling notes on the small hotel notepad left on the nightstand.

After a month, they first made love. It was at Gavin’s house, his parents out of town and his brother at a friend’s house. Gavin touched every inch of Michael’s body, trying to lock onto the colours of his skin, commit them to memory, to his mental palette so he could try and probably fail to recreate this on a canvas. Michael’s internal dictionary ran through words to describe everything he felt, managing to come close but not quite close enough to finding that word he was looking for. His lover didn’t question the words slipping from his lips, the Latin phrases from old textbooks, the French he’d learnt from songs. They weren’t a match. He hadn’t found one. Not yet.

After a year, they graduated from high school, living in a flat together. Gavin was going to university, doing a fine arts course while Michael majored in literature and creative writing at the same school. They didn’t see each other nearly as much as they’d like, Michael’s classes being mostly later on in the afternoon, sometimes at night. Gavin’s were early in the morning, sometimes crossing over to Michael’s, sharing a quick kiss as he handed Michael a cup of coffee.

They were together late at night, at least. Michael would be on his stomach, scribbling in his notebook or typing on his laptop, researching different words to describe beauty, only covered in the sheets of their bed while Gavin sat in the small window seat, a second sheet wrapped around his waist for modesty while he propped his sketchbook on his raised leg, drawing something for Michael, to try and explain something he couldn’t put into words.

“Michael?” Gavin said in the quiet of the room. The curly haired man looked up from his computer and at his lover, loving to watch how his mouth formed every syllable he spoke, trying to map it so he could mimic that accent, that way he emphasised the right words to make Michael’s heart still pound even after so long.

“Yeah, Gavin?” Michael replied and Gavin had to try to bring his attention back to his original thought, distracted by the way his shoulders shifted, his eyes looked nearly purple in the moonlight coming in through the window.

“I-...” Gavin stammered, having trouble forming words. He was never good at speaking from his own heart like Michael was. He was better with images, showing people what he was trying to say. He stood from the window seat, making his way back over to the bed with his sketchbook in hand, handing it over to Michael.

The American took it, sitting up and closing his laptop so Gavin could climb in behind in, bringing Michael to lie back against his chest, a leg raised a little to support Michael while he pressed light kisses to his lover’s shoulders and neck, trying to distract himself because he was afraid to look at Michael’s face, to see how he reacted to what he wanted to say with his art.

“Gavin,” Michael whispered as he looked through the sketchbook. The first picture was of a bouquet, delicate white flowers, auburn ribbons holding them together, the exact shade of his hair.

The second was a field, an arch in the centre covered in those same auburn coloured ribbons and those white flowers Michael couldn’t remember the name of. Michael was starting to understand.

“Gavin? Are you-?” Michael whispered, but Gavin didn’t answer, he just hid his face in Michael’s shoulder, his fingers tracing over the American’s sides, moving over muscles he’d already memorised. He was too afraid to speak, just motioning for him to turn the page.

Michael’s shaking fingers turned the page, a small gasp escaping as he looked at the final sketch.

It was of him and Gavin, with wide smiles on their faces, Gavin holding Michael’s hand up to kiss the ring on the left ring finger.

“Ga-Gavin? Are you asking me to-?” Michael whispered with tears in his eyes, turning to look at his lover, to see him pulling his hand back from the nightstand, a small box opened to reveal a white gold, diamond ring. Worth at least 5 of Gavin’s paintings.

“W-Will you? Will you marry me?” Gavin asked and Michael felt his heart stop, just like all those years ago, in that 8th grade English class when he first heard Gavin speak. Gavin watched Michael, looked into his eyes, seeing that same glow in the brown irises that made his brain just stop working, overloading because he could see everything of Michael, all the love he feels, felt, will feel for this man in front of him.

“Yes. Yes, Gavin,” Michael whispered, tears running down his face as he brought Gavin’s face to his, pressing their lips together in a frenzy separating for a brief moment to take the ring from the box and put it on his finger, moving the laptop and the sketchbook aside so they could tangle themselves in each other with the same passion as their first time together.

To this day, Michael still couldn’t come up with that word to describe Gavin. No word powerful enough to tell the world how beautiful Gavin was, how much he meant to the curly haired boy in 8th grade, silently begging for the gorgeous Brit to notice him, be honest with him.

He’d managed to get a little closer, publishing a series of novels about the beautiful artist and the man that fell in love with him.

And Gavin hadn’t yet managed to perfectly capture Michael in his art. He could get little pieces, enough to catch his eye but nothing was ever complete, nothing was enough to show how Gavin really felt about that beautiful, curly haired creature with his face buried in his notebook back in that English classroom.

There was a collection of paintings in a gallery, some landscapes of a field with a white archway, covered in white flowers and auburn ribbons, some of a person in the distance, they were beautiful but far away, the painting darkening the further from the person it got, as if they were the source of light in that dark world.

The most popular was a large painting. A skinny, light haired boy looking across a classroom at a curly haired boy, a look of longing on his face, a hand hanging loosely at his side with a sketch held between two fingers, a sketch of the curly haired boy with a frustrated scribble covering a lot of the paper.

The fact that they couldn’t yet truly describe what the other means to them didn’t mean they’d ever stop trying.


End file.
